How Did Hundreds of Taylor Swift Fan Letters End Up in a Dumpster?

Hundreds of letters addressed to the country-pop superstar were found discarded in a Nashville dumpster over the weekend.

Kylee Francescon made the shocking discovery when she went to drop off newspapers in a recycling bin behind Granbery Elementary School. In the bin was a huge pile of envelopes decorated with stickers and glitter -- all addressed to Taylor Swift Entertainment.

"I was just tossing my recycling and I saw a letter addressed to Taylor Swift right on top of the massive recycling paper pile and thought, 'That's odd,' Francescon tells omg!. "I looked closer and realized there were hundreds of letters and cards ... and some were unopened. So I grabbed a box and tossed them in there. At the time I didn't know if they were stolen, accidentally placed there, or what."

She also says that while she realizes Swift, 23, is not able to read every piece of fan mail she gets, "I hoped that someone in her staff would at least open them, pull the important ones, and hopefully reply with some sort of postcard or something. At first, I was going to contact her office, but realized that if I did that I could possibly contact the person who haphazardly discarded them ... and Taylor would never know. I know how much she cares about her fans and I wanted her to be aware that her fan mail was not being handled properly."

Francescon then contacted Nashville's Channel 2 and the station sent a reporter to the strip mall where Swift’s post office box is located. After determining that a rep for the singer does in fact come by from time to time to pick up her fan mail, Channel 2’s Andy Cordan took the dumped letters to Swift’s record label, Big Machine Records, located on Nashville’s Music Row.

“Taylor gets thousands of fan letters every day and they are delivered to her management office,” the singer’s rep Paula Erickson told omg! in a statement. “After the letters are opened and read, they are recycled. The only explanation for any letters being unopened would be that a small batch of mail that was supposed to be delivered to Taylor was accidentally put with letters headed for the recycling center. We sincerely appreciate Channel 2 in Nashville bringing this to our attention. We immediately picked up the letters, and they are being dealt with appropriately.”

To Swift's credit, she was too busy to read any letters this weekend ... she was in Omaha, Nebraska, visiting a 10-year-old fan who has cancer. For nearly an hour on Saturday, the singer -- who kicks off her "Red" tour on Wednesday -- hung out with little Lauren Hacker signing autographs and playing music. "It is hard to come down off of the Taylor Swift high," Lauren's mother LesLee Hacker wrote on the family's website on Monday. "I am sure [Lauren] getting to meet her idol has helped tremendously. Taylor is definitely good medicine."